Visitor Insights Specialist - Oakland Museum of California

The Visitor Insights Specialist enhances the visitor experience at OMCA by providing a welcoming presence in the galleries and garden; offering excellent customer service; assessing conditions in the galleries and garden to ensure the safety and security of visitors and collections; creating a visitor feedback loop; and conducting rigorous evaluations and audience research projects. This position focuses on the visitor and their experiences, rather than the educational role of explaining exhibition content. The Visitor Insights Specialist is a facilitator and active researcher who uses evaluative thinking to both address the needs of visitors and inform the work of OMCA. 

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The following reflects OMCA’s definition of essential functions for this position, but does not restrict the tasks that may be assigned. OMCA may assign or reassign duties and responsibilities to this position at any time due to reasonable accommodation or other reasons. 

INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES

• Support the Museum’s mission, values, vision, and core commitment to the visitor experience, community engagement, anti-racism and institutional relevancy for the future;
• Contribute to and support the OMCA strategic plan, annual priorities, and institutional initiatives such as diversity advancement;
• Contribute to a positive organizational culture based on mutual respect, a spirit of collegiality, cooperation, and openness to many perspectives;
• Participate in a culture of ongoing learning, collaboration, innovation, creativity, and community engagement.
• All positions will have core functional responsibilities, cross functional team activation and learning and development as a core function of each role

POSITION DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Customer Service 

• Provide visitors with a quality experience using a high level of customer service, including welcoming visitors as they enter the campus and galleries; assisting with overall wayfinding and locating of amenities; and helping with visitor needs (multilingual materials, wheelchairs, etc.).
• Use evaluation techniques to serve an interpretive function in the galleries and garden.  For example, engage visitors with questions or other prompts to encourage exploration of the galleries and gardens, model behavior (e.g., how to use exhibits), and encourage interactions among visitors. This role is intended as a facilitator and not an information source.
• Interact with disappointed visitors, listen to their issues to attempt to find a resolution, and use de-escalation techniques.
• Record and analyze visitor complaints/concerns/kudos/issues, inform staff who could address these issues, and follow-up with visitors as appropriate.  A new process for systematically recording, tracking, aggregating, and analyzing visitors’ complaints/concerns/issues will be co-developed by the Visitor Insights Specialists and their manager and will be prototyped in the first six months of this new position.  

Maintenance Support

• Assess conditions of the galleries by constantly roving to ensure presentable conditions and safety of the objects, visitors, and other staff members.
• Monitor interactive features and power management of projectors, iPads, screens, etc. within the galleries to ensure they are working properly.
• Assist security in enforcing the gallery rules and communicate with staff via email any pressing issues that come up in galleries in terms of safety (of collection and of visitors) and technical problems needing immediate attention.
• Tidy hands-on exhibit elements to optimize visitor experience and safety.

Research Implementation 

• Following all data collection protocols for all phase of evaluation and research:
• Collect paper- and/or digital-based visitor surveys 
• Conduct visitor interviews 
• Conduct visitor observations

• Record, enter, process, clean, and code quantitative and qualitative data per designed spreadsheets, databases, and rubrics.
• Maintain data collection logs and draft data recaps.
• Document, analyze, and maintain visitor response exhibits (e.g., History Now).
• With guidance from manager, co-develop and implement participatory visitor research projects to improve the visitor experience and inform future OMCA work. This work will ramp up slowly after the first six months of implementing the new Visitor Insights Specialist position.

EXPERIENCE

• Ability to display and encourage visitor and internal customer service, take and share responsibility and treat others with respect.

• 1-2 years experience in customer service, hospitality, guest relations, or related field.
• English language proficiency in both spoken and written form; a second language (particularly Spanish or Chinese) highly desirable.
• Evidence of successful interactions with diverse populations.
• Ability to communicate in a clear and positive manner in chaotic surroundings.
• Attention to detail and ability to follow data collection and entry protocols without deviation. 
• Ability to develop rapport with strangers to fulfill project and Museum objectives.
• Critical thinking and ability to be responsive to verbal and non-verbal cues in interviews.
• Analytical skills to assess problems and determine solutions.
• Knowledge of MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint).
• Knowledge of Google applications (Sheets, Docs, Slides, Forms, Data Studio).
• Experience with digital devices (iPads, audio recorder) for data collection.

WORK ENVIRONMENT 

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of the job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. The environment may include:

• Museum environment involves both indoor and outdoor working conditions
• Ability to travel between OMCA locations, and other travel as required by position responsibilities 
• Engage with diverse visitor populations for extended periods of time in the galleries or throughout the campus
• Ability to work a flexible schedule, including evenings and weekends

EEO STATEMENT

The Oakland Museum of California is dedicated to diversity, inclusion, accessibility and equity. We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ability/disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We highly encourage our diverse community to apply for available employment, internship, fellowship and volunteer positions at the Museum, as we aim to ensure our staff reflects the diversity of our visitors and the surrounding community. In compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, OMCA will provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities.

COMPENSATION: $31.28 - $31.28 hourly